Midsummer's Dream

May—

We are moving.

A couple of weeks ago, I stood in the yard of our new home for the first time, and knew that this was going to be it. So many things about this place remind me of where I grew up—the grassy hill in the back, the open yard, the burn pile, the flowers—and where I grew up is so deeply entangled in my heart that I have never stopped missing it. In our current small town neighborhood, I walk the same mile at least twice a day, and I never miss walking past the one meadow left to itself at the edge of a loop of houses. Something in me is pulled to the green space, the untrimmed trees, the birds swooping and singing.

I always walk away from there glancing back over my shoulder.

As a child, I often walked to one of the high points of my parents’ property to look out over everything—the blueberry patch, the rows of flowers growing over sturdy plastic, the flower gardens closer to the house, and the woods beyond. And I would think, how could I ever leave this. As much as I hated working long hours in the hot, humid summers, I loved the land. I loved the earth between my fingers. I knew its color and texture. I loved the wind in my hair.

In many photos of myself as a child, my long thin hair is loose over my shoulders. I loved to feel free. And I did, until I didn’t. Suddenly everything changed, and the flowers and plants and gardens and trees and birds that I loved so much were not enough to tether me to that place anymore. They could never be enough.

I hate to go back there now. To my eyes, what once was Eden is now a ruin. I can’t tell if that is because of how much the property has deteriorated, or if it is because of all the betrayal that played out on those few acres.

I found a new home very quickly once I left my first home. My husband and I, we made a new home. It is here that I gave birth to our two children and gathered them to my chest for the first time. Here, we planted a raised-bed garden and put together a trampoline and we know the neighborhood in and out from walking it hundreds and hundreds of times. I can tell you about the bush where the little sparrows love to congregate, and the tall tree where the European starlings hold court. I can tell you where that one woodpecker perches on our neighbor’s tin chimney and drums a loud staccato early in the morning, a rude alarm for whoever’s inside the home.

I also have human friends, of course. I don’t like to think about not being within walking distance of the people I’ve grown to know and love here. Many warm afternoons, my children are out on the front sidewalk, biking crazily in circles with the two kids from next door.

The weekend we decided to buy the new house, my husband sighed and turned to me: “It will be sad to leave this place. We’ve made it so cozy.”

And he’s right. We have. And I hate pulling roots, I hate the bitter change of it, the hundreds of adjustments that must be made, the slow growth into a new space and new relationships.

But—but. If I can give my children the fraction of the joy I felt in my heart when I ran over the long grassy lawn as fast as I could, I will. If I can teach them the particularities of different flowers, the planting seasons for each vegetable, and that there’s no shame in their hands being dirty and scratched from hard work, I will take this opportunity I get to do that on a much greater scale. I want to give them a place to run, explore, dig, play, laugh, and I will hope and pray and work to make sure that place is always beautiful and safe for them to come back to. And—and this is not a small “and”—I want to be in a place that reminds me of the best parts of my childhood. Because those parts are still in my heart. They’ve formed my consciousness and my perspectives and my loves.

What my father did give me, amidst everything he took, was eyes to see the world, which really means attentiveness. It means care. It means responsibility. He saw the natural world in this way, and I learned this way of seeing from him. I learned the tenderness with which he cared for our orchards and gardens, and because I learned it so well, my heart was completely broken by his cruelty towards his own family.

Here’s to continuing forward with the best pieces of what I’ve received. Here’s to planting a beautiful, bountiful garden in a new home.

June—

My mind is intent, drawn, all its cells and synapses gathering around a central point like metal shavings to a magnet. I am thinking about moving. My body is preparing to move. I am moving—I am the action and the process itself. I think about the gardens at the new house, I think about mulch, I think about weeds, I think about compost, I think about new plants, I think about which old plants need care.

I think about the bedrooms, the walls to be painted, the trim I need to tape off. I think of the kitchen with peeling contact paper inside the shelves and mouse droppings along the back edge of each cabinet. I pack and pack and pack. The packing never ends, it is a train of boxes chugging slowly behind me. I lay boxes like eggs in my path.

If there is one thing I could have right now, it would be a day, just one day, transported from last June to this June. This June is a slippery eel, a constantly moving stream of work and stress, of planning and execution. It is a June of change—a new home, new contours of life. Last June was a June of beaches in the sky, a June of green waves in the undulating trees, a June of bathing in the sun and reading books and watching the children play with a smile on my face that I certainly didn’t paste there.

I want to have one part of that June left for this June: the relentless creativity. I want the energy to write, the words that spun themselves into gold like Rumpelstiltskin’s hay. But can my mind be consumed with this moving process and the writing process at the same time? Is that what I want? Do I want this to be easier, do I want my brain to release its intensity like the steam from a kettle? Because it is this pressure, this intense focus that made this home what it is—a place where I sat outdoors in the afternoon and wrote sentences in my head and watched the children play. This pressure now, directed at forming a new home, forces everything else away from itself, including the sentences. Sometimes they creep back late at night, but mostly they stay far away.

Do I want the pressure to leave? When it is a forceful breath on the mirror of my life, tracing a mysterious outline of the next, more expansive years?

Here is a cradle. Here is a garden. Here is a room in which to write, in which to store the hundreds of books collected and now carefully, tenderly packed in boxes stacked on boxes stacked on boxes.

Early July—

Midsummer descends in a haze of humidity and heat. Sitting here by the wildflower meadow near a friend’s home, I can see the air shimmering, and hear it, too. The sounds of summer are the sounds of buzzing, dozing, and dreaming. Cicadas, crickets, and cardinals whistle and drone above the wild Canada thistle and the bright black-eyed Susan’s. A catbird screeches, shaking the steady curtain of these sounds, then flies on.

This is the time to seek out water and shade, the sustenance of cool lapping darkness under the cover of trees. This is the time to work when we must, and to rest as a necessity.

I woke early to pull weeds this morning, and to plug in the sprinkler to refresh the garden. The weeds loom endlessly here at our new property, massing resistance against the paltry efforts of the only two hands I have. Will I have conquered them by the end of summer? I doubt it. I make a mental note to take action early next spring—either to drastically reduce the garden size, or to lay plastic and mulch down in the areas we don’t plant.

I miss the ease of three little garden beds, even as I enjoy the dainty pink and white clarkia stems, the papery purple blooms of statice, and the feathery cosmos thriving in the heat. I could not have used precious space for these things before.

It’s a cliché to say it, but I hope other things bloom here, too. Maybe a little confidence, more patience, some wisdom, and peace. A month or so ago, a spiritual director I met with asked me, gently, what I would like to make space for here. I told her I want to strengthen the best skills I learned as a child: good, hard work, and the resilience learned by meeting daily new challenges. Opportunities for that abound with owning more property, and with renovating a house, transforming it into our home. My capacity is stretched. I have to prioritize more now. I have to make careful decisions about what I will do in this block of time, and this, and this.

When she asked me what I’d like to leave behind, my eyes instantly welled with tears. I had to take a breath before I could answer.

“The fear,” I whispered, “I want to leave behind the fear.”

Let the first lesson I learned at who-knows-how-young linger behind me, may it melt into the walls of our old home and dissipate to nothing. If it made its way with me, may it stay packed away in those boxes in the storage room among the flotsam and jetsam we accumulate in a life, and may I choose when to reach for it, examine it, and discard it, or to stow it away again for when it is useful, for when it will serve its purpose to preserve me and not destroy me.

I know such wishes are grandiose. But this is the summer to wish, to dream, to sleep and wake and work and sleep again.

The soothing songs of summer creatures remind me that I am safe. I am secure. I am safe and secure, with validation given or denied, with all my failures, frailties, and blind spots, with the comforts of our old rhythms as a family and a couple upended, with many of my questions—about God, about the world, about people—still unanswered. I am safe, too, in the little moments, in the waking in the night with the orientation of our bedroom confused, not sure what side of the bed I’m sleeping on, or where the walls are in relation to my body.

One of my friends wears a necklace with the pinprick of a mustard seed tucked inside. This tiny seed, Jesus said, can disturb the earth and upend mountains with its burgeoning strength, with its call to the heavens to come down and invade this earthly reality, this soil, this life.

Bless the mustard seed, I ask the Lord, the tender, careful gardener. In this busy, busy summer, bless it as You always have.